bright future for online classifieds.. but wait... are we missing something here?
Yes. Indeed. Big boys like Google, MSN and Yahoo has failed in online classifieds. They feel that it is difficult to capitalise on horizontal classifieds with thousands of categories, mainly because vertical classifieds with specific category are more popular (eg. Automobile, Real Estate and Recruitment). Online Classifieds has never come close to the success of Ebay. So, will anyone succeed in horizontal classifieds? It will take massive amount of traffic and time to establish one. Craigslist became the closest, followed by a couple more popular sites namely usfreeads.com, ablewise.com, adlandpro.com, oodle.com, google base(aggregator) and kijiji.com (owned by ebay).
In my opinion, classified advertisers are looking for more than just traditional online classifieds. Features like social bookmarking, RSS, Videos etc... will further enhance the popularity of the site.
The race is on, and the winner is yet to be identified. Reviews and statistics show tremendous growth in online classifieds and who will be the ultimate winner. Let the market decide. We wait.